Okay guys, anyone have any trouble sleeping last night after your wife read yesterday’s Catch? I’ve been checking around to be sure all the hammers in our house are where they belong. The biblical story of Jael driving a tent peg through the skull of Sisera kind of gives new meaning to the song, “If I Had A Hammer” doesn’t it? If you think about it, the song does identify it as “the hammer of justice,” and what better way to hammer out justice than to hammer a tent peg through the temple of any guy who has ever treated a woman as anything less than himself? God knows we deserve it.

I think of how we used to make fun of my mother for being dumb and not being able to get the simplest jokes we cracked, and how she played into it because it was probably the only attention she was going to ever get, so she took it. I think of the times I’ve yucked it up with the guys, turning the women we know into emotional dufuses and somehow thinking that was okay. I think of all the times I’ve used sarcasm to “put a woman in her place” and laughed it off as a joke when in truth it really wasn’t. (Sarcasm rarely is.) I think of times when I’ve tried to gain a sense of power off the weakness of women instead of holding them in high esteem, or considering them as scripture would have it, as more important than myself, and I begin to think I deserve that tent peg.

We do this in our culture; we do this in our churches. We have subtle ways in which we create and maintain injustice in our own homes without even working at it.

Well, it’s time we started working at something else. It’s time we started working at value, worth, honor and dignity.

Hey, don’t just make her your Valentine, make her your equal. Don’t just give her flowers; giver her respect. Don’t just give her a box of chocolates; give her your attention. And not just on February 14; make it every day.

Hammer out danger if you don’t. Hammer out a warning unless you do. Hammer out love between brothers and sisters everywhere. God loves it. Justice requires it.